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When Fes met Shaq

The Pacers signed Kyrylo Fesenko on Mar. 23. In the month of April, they are 11-1. The number of games he has played in is irrelevant. I’m sure the Pacers are just now a much happier and light-hearted team, and it’s showing on the court.

Fes on the first time he ever met Shaquille O’Neal (via The Classical):

“I played against him first time for, I spent 50 seconds on the court, actually 50 seconds against Shaq,” he said. “So, at one point he was posting me up and I was thinking ‘Oh, I got him. I got him.’ And I pictured myself, you know, blocking him. You know, I pictured myself being on the front page of all newspapers and everything. I was already so hyped, like I was thinking how I’m going to tell it to my friends. And then he dunked on me.”

Demoralizing, right? Not at all.

“When you first time meet your hero—if you ever meet your hero—you will definitely remember it,” he said. “I was still thinking about like, ‘Did somebody get a picture of that?'”

Fes also talked about the first time he met Shaq:

When it Fesenko turned into an NBA prospect, he came to the U.S. to workout for the NBA Draft, and he happened to be auditioning for the Pistons when the Heat were in Detroit. Fesenko got tickets to the game, and made sure he was close enough to catch Shaq’s attention.

“I was just, ‘Can I have a picture with you?’ He was very nice,” Fesenko said… “So he came to me, took a picture. It was awesome.

“I uploaded it to the Internet right away, like, let my friends see it,” he said. “And well, it was pretty cool when somebody who knows me, like they knew how much I wanted to take a picture with Shaq.”

Said picture (you can see Fes’ Pistons pass):

I’ve never liked Shaq–if only he were a fraction of how funny he thinks he is–but he was nice to Fes, so I’ll give him one brownie point.